Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Of course smartphones are brilliant inventions, but the nefarious thing about Twitter and other social media is that it starts to fill all the gaps in your day. I quickly become an addict.
I always call performing live "giving the people the medicine," because when you're engaged in it, you can feel the sort of soul magic being exchanged between the performer and the audience.
I'm a very intermediate sax player, but now that Rob Lowe is on my show, I had to cop to him. Like, 'Dude your ridiculous fake sax playing [in St. Elmo's Fire] inspired me to pick up a horn.'
When I was in high school, I would perform every year in those plays and there was something I really loved about it. But I was completely unaware that you could sort of get into an acting career.
I don't get nominated, and I have to say, I've probably gotten the greatest mass of press in my life through not getting nominated. It's definitely been a winning situation as far as I'm concerned.
I have a Kenwood charcoal grill. In our house, if anybody is cooking, it's me. I love making burgers. I love making pork tenderloin. Lamb chops I do on the grill a lot. But you just can't beat brats.
I think what makes so many other actors miserable is focusing completely on making other plans. They're obsessed with their haircut and their headshot and their agent, their IMDB profile or whatever.
We're cognizant, curious beings, capable of philosophical thought, nuclear physics, repeating Nerf weapons, global consciousness, Glade air fresheners, and sentient automobiles. But we're assholes first.
We have such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choice. Do you want to hike in the Alps? There are 300 pairs of shoes you can order within the next 10 minutes. You have your choice of everything.
Not only do I recommend Wendell Berry to anyone who will talk to me for more than seven seconds, but I buy his books in quantity and send them to people. I bought a few dozen of his newest, "Our Only World."
I learned in my early years in the theater that I would never become the guy on top. I'll never create a show; I don't have a brain expansive enough to see the whole picture, in a way that would behoove anyone.
Jack London is a very generous description of my small hiking, bicycling, and canoeing habit. I myself feel like a weak urbanite a lot of the time, because lots of my friends are incredible outdoorsmen and women.
When I hear young people today complain about being bored - and the things that keep them from being bored are generally exclusively videogames and/or computer pastimes - I just try to encourage them to go outside.
It was on a van ride home from the movie set that everything came together. I realized I had to get off Twitter. It just struck me that I couldn't stop everyone else from doing it, but I could certainly stop myself.
Men and women alike, if you think that altering the tip of your nose with surgery will make you happier, I would suggest you alter something much more malleable than your flesh, like your priorities, or your friends.
When I use weed creatively, I'm much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.
I think all these great comforts that come from the human condition of trying to make things easier on ourselves also have these pitfalls, where things become so easy that we forget how enjoyable building a fence can be.
I think it's fascinating that I receive attention for what people perceive to be a level of manliness or machismo, when amongst my family of farmers and paramedics and regular Americans, I'm kind of the sissy in my family.
It's hard to swallow when people say, "Oh my God, you're a master of something." I say, "No, I'm actually a student of that. I could turn you on to websites for 25 masters, and you'll quickly see that I am their disciple."
Always maintain the attitude of a student. If you think you've done learning, bitterness sets in, but if you have more to achieve every day, in any arena, that makes each morning's awakening full of potential and cheery portent.
I feel it's important to point out that I've earned my humility by being a jackass - like, I trip and fall on my face and say, "Oh, right. Don't think you're a big shot, because you've got a bloody nose now." So it's hard to say.
You know, even working actors can end up having a lot of spare time. And you can either go sit at the Starbucks and wait for your agent to call you, or you can go learn how to build a Shaker blanket chest with hand-cut dovetails.
I won't read a new graphic comic novel until the writer has completed the entire series. I got burned a few times when I got turned on to a book, plowed through it only to find out the author was in the middle of writing the next.
If you're an original thinker, you are going get told 'no' a lot, and you have to be able to hear 'no' many times from the bankers and trust that at some point, someone is going to recognize that you are an artist and not a can of soda.
I worked mostly in television drama for my first few years. I just kept guesting on NYPD Blues and CSI-like stuff, so when I started getting work in comedy, a lot of people in the business would say, 'Oh - I didn't know you did comedy.'
The first thing I do, after I talk with the director and we agree that I'm going to do the role... My jumping off point is I get a picture of what my 'look' will be. My wardrobe style, my facial hair, glasses and all that kind of stuff.
The key, I would say to any fledgling humorist starting out, is to make sure that sloppiness is part of your recipe. That way they come to expect fumbling and clumsiness and they say, "Oh, it must be a charming part of his personality."
I have a very healthy growth of both head and facial hair. People always want to attribute further superhuman powers to me. It's funny the way the audience really seems to want me, Nick the actor, to exhibit the same machismo as Ron Swanson.
I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it.
Auditioning for television shows - to find a guy who has a lot of experience as a laborer is a bit of an anomaly. We do exist. I know several other actors who have made their living, instead of a waitress job, framing houses or blacktopping roads.
I made an executive decision in college when I learned how behind I was in the world of books, films, and music because of my rural upbringing. I really reduced the amount of time that sports took up in my life.I still have some Faulkner to get through.
I have a corn creamer that I love. It extracts pulp and juice from kernels, and I simmer that down into a creamed corn that has an almost mashed potato-like consistency. I add butter and hit it with chopped fresh chives at the end for an accent of color.
When it comes to marijuana, I think it's ridiculous to live in a country that espouses freedom, liberty and equality, yet won't follow through on a philosophy that says: "If it's not hurting anybody or their property, you can do any goddamn thing you want."
I think the whole thing is kind of sad, honestly, in the same way that our civilization - particularly the consumers of pop culture - has grown so used to an emasculated, bare-chested leading man that something like simply growing a mustache can impress people.
I have a ridiculously beautiful wife who's super sexy, and as long as she's happy with me, I don't need to look in the mirror and think, "How do I stack up next to Bradley Cooper? Would Cooper rock this shirt?" Doesn't matter. He does not have your wife. You do.
When I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary.
"I don't ever want to try to be a 'cute guy.' I want to be Charles Laughton, or Oliver Reed, or Lon Cheney. That's way more fun for me." And once I flipped that switch, that's another thing I've taken off my shoulders, where I never have to worry about, "Do I look good?"
When I was in fourth grade, we were learning vocabulary words, and the word nonconformist came up. The teacher said, "It's somebody who whatever everybody is doing, they do the opposite." I remember raising my hand and saying, "Mrs. Christiansen, I would like to be a nonconformist."
One of the most poignant pieces of recent science fiction for me was the portrayal of the adults in the Pixar film WALL-E. I feel like we're on the cusp of becoming fat babies in floating chairs being fed everything in shake form, and I feel like I am as prone to laziness as anybody.
If properly dried and trimmed, New York-style pizza could be used to make a box for Chicago-style pizza. I love a slice when I'm in NYC, but it's like eating a Slim Jim compared with a filet mignon. One slice of Gino's East stuffed sausage pizza is a bigger meal than an entire New York pie.
My wife, the actress Megan Mullally, was an English major at Northwestern University and loves fiction. Like so many things in my life, she curates things for me. For example, I have the daunting prospect of Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch" waiting for me when I get through my current reading pile.
I don't know what it is on an elemental level, but a beard in general evokes hedonism. It's a more lush personal grooming style. It's more comfortable and cozy; it's less sharp and angular and businesslike. I feel like a beard is more Hobbit-like, even though Hobbits themselves are clean-shaven.
It's irrelevant to me if other people know who I am. I'm just, I'm really happy. It calms me down, too. If you're on top of an oilrig, fighting with politicians, or whatever - you need a bit of wisdom to realize that you're not always right, or that you're not always being reasonable, or you're not always listening.
I became very interested [in philosophy] after attending the U.N. Conference on sustainable development in Brazil.I'm very concerned about climate change and the world reaching a tipping point. And, I see other people who really just want to survive to make it to the next election, rather than making means of change.
Doing voice work is more like recording music that people are going to listen to. You're creating an oral experience using whatever bells and whistles you have in your voice, and you can shut your eyes and use your imagination and nobody's going to see if the faces you make don't match the voices you make. That's a lot of fun.
I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.
With all of the visual distraction constantly inundating us in the form of our devices and screens, I really derive a great deal of pleasure from watching the sun rise and set, admiring clouds as they change shape across the sky, watching tree leaves and blossoms undulate in the breeze....these treats foment an ocular-cleansing refreshment to my way of thinking.
When I was a kid, I lived in this small town way out in the country. We had three TV channels and one radio station. I couldn't even get my hands on good comic books. My aunt, who is a librarian, gave me Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," and Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia." They were such incredible treasures to have in my somewhat mundane country life.
Turn off your computer and go out of doors. Dig a large enough hole to transplant a mature apple tree. Nurture the tree, feed it, coddle it so that its fruit will be ample, bright and firm. Practice open-hand strikes against the rough bark of the trunk until it's time to harvest. Choose the champion of your apple crop, pluck it from the tree, and beat yourself about the face and tits with it until your mettle will suffice.
When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive.